TY - JOUR
AU - Angrist,Joshua
AU - Lang,Daniel
AU - Oreopoulos,Philip
TI - Lead Them to Water and Pay Them to Drink: An Experiment with Services and Incentives for College Achievement
JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL - No. 12790
PY - 2006
Y2 - December 2006
DO - 10.3386/w12790
UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12790
L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12790.pdf
N1 - Author contact info:
Joshua Angrist
Department of Economics, E52-436
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/253-8909
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: angrist@mit.edu
Daniel Lang
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M5S 1V6
E-Mail: dlang@oise.utoronto.ca
Philip Oreopoulos
Department of Economics
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, ON M5S 3G7
CANADA
E-Mail: philip.oreopoulos@utoronto.ca
AB - High rates of attrition, delayed completion, and poor achievement are growing concerns at colleges and universities in North America. This paper reports on a randomized field experiment involving two strategies designed to improve these outcomes among first-year undergraduates at a large Canadian university. One treatment group was offered peer advising and organized study group services. Another was offered substantial merit-scholarships for solid, but not necessarily top, first year grades. A third treatment group combined both interventions. Service take-up rates were much higher for students offered both services and scholarships than for those offered services alone. Females also used services more than males. No program had an effect on grades for males. However, first-term grades were significantly higher for females in the two scholarship treatment groups. These effects faded somewhat by year's end, but remain significant for females who planned to take enough courses to qualify for a scholarship. There also appears to have been an effect on retention for females offered both scholarships and services. This effect is large enough to generate an overall increase in retention. On balance, the results suggest that a combination of services and incentives is more promising than either alone.
ER -